Jerry Garcia’s favourite Fleetwood Mac album
The Grateful Dead have always been a relatively difficult band to pin down. They continue to divide audiences, as those who are fans are relentless, continually praising and listening to the Grateful Dead while also taking any opportunity to see whatever iteration of the band is available. Others struggle to connect with their music and don’t see what the hype is about.
Jerry Garcia is just as difficult to pin down as the band he fronted. Known by some as a musical madman and others as an artist who was able to draw creativity from the deepest recesses of human emotion, before anything else, Garcia was simply a music lover.
Garcia and his band, Grateful Dead, could walk into a room, sense the energy within it, and play up to that power. This meant that their gigs changed every night. They had their original songs, which provided a loose backbone to their shows, but other than that, they were happy to live in the moment.
Patti Smith’s guitarist, Lenny Kaye, once spoke about the live album Live / Dead and called it some of their best work. “Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best-performing bands in America, why their music touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists,” he said.
Kaye continued: “A list of songs would mean very little in terms of what actually goes inside the album. Like early Cream, the Dead in concert tends to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them.”
Kaye also highlighted how difficult it can be to perform in jam bands because of how much of a connection is needed on stage to blend one song into the next. He stated that the Grateful Dead were masters at this, confirming, “A jamming band has to rely on its sense of flow, on its talent in taking that small series of steps which will ultimately bring it to some entirely different place from where it started.”
For Grateful Dead to play as they did, they had to know about a range of different musical styles, allowing them to explore various tones, themes, and time signatures. Jerry Garcia’s music taste is varied to the extent that you would expect. He shows he likes a range of music, each influence subtly tapping into what he eventually made with the Grateful Dead.
One of the most prominent genres in his life, however, was the blues, and this is reflected in his favourite Fleetwood Mac album. Though most of the band’s success would be trumped by the triumph of Rumours, Garcia connected the most with their debut self-titled album, stating that the blues focus of the record was particularly appealing.
It resonated so much that The Grateful Dead ended up working with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Keith Olsen. They asked Olsen to bring some of that blues focus to the band, which has since been heard on a number of different Grateful Dead tracks.
